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Friday, August 1, 2014

Bourdais Tops Second Mid-Ohio Practice, Honda Takes Seven of Top Ten

Sébastien Bourdais was fastest in second practice, fifth fastest overall on Friday

Winner two weeks ago at Toronto, Sébastien Bourdais topped second practice from Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The Frenchman ran a 66.8271, 0.0539 seconds ahead of second fastest Carlos Muñoz. The Colombian was followed by fellow Honda drivers Takuma Sato and Justin Wilson on the timesheet. Sato was 0.0794 seconds back of Bourdais while Wilson trailed by 0.2312 seconds. Ryan Briscoe rounded out the top five, just a little over a quarter of a second behind Bourdais.

Hondas occupied the next four spots on the time sheet. The fastest two in first practice, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Simon Pagenaud were sixth and seventh in second practice. Rookies Carlos Huertas and Mikhail Aleshin were eighth and ninth with Scott Dixon rounding out the top ten, trailing Bourdais by 0.4317 seconds. Hunter-Reay and Dixon each ran a session-low twelve laps.

Hélio Castroneves was eleventh with James Hinchcliffe just a half second back in twelfth. Team Penskes Will Power and Juan Pablo Montoya were thirteenth and fourteenth respectively. Graham Rahal rounded out the top fifteen. Hondas took nine out of the top fifteen in second practice after taking ten of the top fifteen in the morning session.

After being cellar dwellers in the first session, Britain's Jack Hawksworth and Mike Conway jumped to sixteenth and seventeenth respectively in second practice. Conway ran twenty-two laps in second practice, the most of the session. Josef Newgarden was eighteenth while Tony Kanaan gained one position from the morning and ending nineteenth. Marco Andretti rounded out the top twenty. Defending Mid-Ohio winner Charlie Kimball was twenty-first with Sebastián Saavedra rounding out the field in twenty-second.

The top nineteen were covered by one second with the entire field being covered by 1.1645 seconds.

Using the combined results from Friday, the qualifying groups for round one will be as follows: